Dustin Carver
Dustin Carver is a Verbena Mage, member of the Terebinthea Chantry, and leader of the Fey Circle Cabal. Overview One of the first students at U.C. Santa Cruz, Dustin Carver is also the eldest of the Fey Circle, a Verbena coven that has been operating in the area since the sixties. His Awakening as a mage was slow and gradual; Dustin’s Avatar took the form of an elven scout (or a Vulcan spy once Star Trek came on the air) and led him through a series of quests and mysteries. As a result, Dustin became convinced that he was an elf, until the day of the moon landing and the arrival of the sidhe. Confronted with this (and a good deal of haughty elven nobles), Dustin was forced to revise his opinions, though he still believes that he has elven blood in his veins, and he still follows the faerie tradition of Verbena magecraft. He knows more of the Dreamrealms than most changelings ever will, and moreover has contacts among the Garou, making him the most powerful member of the court of Terebinthea, apart from the Griffin Orzobal. However, he prefers the role of advisor to kingmaker and the role of kingmaker to lord, and so he has allowed Lady Mira and Peter Oslo to share the crown between them. * Note: 'Dustin is a True Mage, and as such, cannot automatically see chimera and other forms of Glamour. However, he makes use of a Verbena rote called Faerie Salve. This requires Mind 1/Spirit 1 and a complicated herbal salve which is applied to the eyes or ears, enchanting them and allowing them to perceive Glamour. Usually, this salve is applied to one eye and one ear, s that the subject may distinguish between the two realities. The salve may be used by any mortals (the magick is done during the preparation) and the magick is considered coincidental, as all the herbs possess hallucinogenic properties. Image Small and fine-boned, Dustin stands no more than 5’5” and looks about twenty, although he’s actually over fifty. He has longish, dark brown hair, green eyes, and pointed ears, like Mr. Spock or Peter Pan, or a Tolkien elf. This is what mages call a Paradox Flaw, and Dustin usually conceals his with a bandana. In mundane reality, he favors army camo pants and photographer’s jackets, all in forest colors with lots of pockets, though to fae sight, these are revealed to be voile of superlative craftsmanship, something like high fantasy adventurer’s gear done up for Star Fleet or a Lost Boy gone hi-tech. Personal Dustin is one of the Lost Boys (the original J.M. Barrie gang, not the vampire wannabes) except he's not Peter Pan, who was a boy who never grew up; Dustin gave up boyhood, he just never gave up his teens. Like Neil Young said, “You can’t be twenty on Sugar Mountain,” and his pointed ears have kept him at a perpetual nineteen for at least thirty years, not that he’s counting. He might even have green blood. He doesn’t know, he hasn’t checked lately to see if that Paradox Flaw has worked its way out yet. But it really doesn’t matter. He’s a wood elf or a feral Vulcan or something like that, and he knows dozens of faerie charms and all sorts of fey witchcraft. Of course, even though many of them are the same charms that the changelings use, his work a good deal better. Probably because he’s a mage, but he doesn’t think that’s incompatible with being an elf. Read Tolkien. There have been faerie sorcerers since the old days of Middle Earth, and lots of mortals with faerie blood, and witches and the fae have hung out together for a long time and traded tricks, so it’s not a big deal. Merlin was said to have had fae blood, even though he was most definitely a mage, and although Dustin would never go the long beard and pointy hat route, he ''is the mage of Terebinthea: court sorcerer, councilor, and occasional kingmaker, though he’s pretty slack about it and seldom shows his true power. He also tends to keep his mouth shut and watch more than he speaks. A lot of mages think he’s skating dangerously close to becoming a Marauder, living in his ow dream world filled with changelings and chimerical beasts. Of course, he knows that they’re real, and has changeling friends who will back him up on this, even though most of the mages of his coven are rather unsure of the whole thing. His hobgoblins are even more trouble for Dustin’s changeling friends, since his hallucinations don’t even have to manifest into subjective reality to affect them. He lets his friends call him Dusty, though everyone else just calls him Carver. Treasure Dustin owns a talisman of incredible power: a '''Photon Crossbow, jointly created by the dwarven smiths of the Mines of Moria and the imperial Klingon weapon-makers. Really. The crossbow is a wickedly flanged Mithril silver and Klingon ebony weapon, set with ruby rods and prisms, and engraved with highly stylized Dwarven and Klingon runes (Linguistics roll, difficulty 10, to decipher). Dustin took this dream weapon from a truly bizarre dreamrealm of the late 60s, and through arcane rites and pure will has anchored it to mundane reality. Most of the time he keeps the crossbow in the Dreaming so as to avoid the strange force mages call Paradox. In this state, the weapon is harmless to those outside the Dreaming, though it can inflict terrible wounds to spirits, changelings, the Enchanted, astral travelers, and Umbral werewolves. Dustin can also use his magecraft to pull the crossbow into mundane reality, which allows him to affect physical beings, though he is usually loath to do so. Publicly using the Talisman increases his Paradox rating; though the crossbow is a superlative weapon, the magick is highly vulgar. The treasure fires as would a normal crossbow, except the damage is 10 dice, the rate of fire is 2, attack successes add to the damage dice pool, the weapon automatically reloads, and the range for the photon beam is line of sight (though with increased difficulties for targeting). Hobgoblins Mages who slip further away from mundane reality pass into what is known as Quiet, wherein they interact with their own personal fantasies and hallucinations. Dustin’s Quiet, however, is very close to fae reality, if not quite the same thing, at least when Dustin is around. Creatures from his dreams and imagination tend to pop into being in his presence, or possibly follow him out of the dream realms where the first encountered him. It’s a rather subjective matter, but these chimera are every bit as real to changelings as other dream beings are, and a good bit more obnoxious. Dustin’s imaginary playmates are usually creatures of epic science fiction and fantasy adventures, including, but not limited to, various denizens of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and every Star Trek series. These chimera, hobgoblins, as mages call them, are particularly powerful, in that they can occasionally manifest into mundane reality in a mage’s immediate vicinity, and can interact with even the most mundane individuals. References # CTD. Freeholds & Hidden Glens, pp. 120-121. Category:Changeling: The Dreaming characters Category:Mage: The Ascension character Category:Verbena